You must consider many issues and details before deploying Group Policy in your environment. This chapter will help you make the best decisions possible. We will first discuss where the concepts of Active Directory^® design meet the essential concepts of linking and implementing Group Policy objects (GPOs) within the Active Directory structure. We will then consider where GPOs can be linked within Active Directory, as well as the pros and cons of linking GPOs to different Active Directory containers.

We will also discuss when and where to use the Enforce (No Override), Block Policy Inheritance, GPO Filtering, and WMI Filtering settings. These settings are extremely powerful and useful, but they can be overused, to the detriment to the overall GPO design.

At the core of all Group Policy deployment discussion is the issue of performance. If you have too many GPOs, with too many settings deployed to a target object, it will take far too long to apply the policies. This chapter will introduce techniques for improving the performance of GPO design and deployment.

Finally, we will offer an extensive list of best practices to help you in every aspect of GPO deployment—including overall design, testing of GPOs, structuring of GPOs, and linking GPOs.

Related Information